Think of the Liberal Party’s election implosion as a major nuclear accident — a Chernobyl of political arrogance and incompetence; a Fukushima of policy misdirection and fantasising; a Three Mile Island of strategic self-delusion and stupidity.
Nuclear accidents have impacts far beyond their radioactive fallout zone. They cost a bomb to clean up, and linger long in the public consciousness. So while no-one knows the political half-life of this toxic policy blunder, it won’t be short, which makes it all the more remarkable that significant political figures on both Liberal and National sides have clung to their disastrous nuclear power policy this week.
Teal slayer Tim Wilson, who bucked the national anti-Liberal mega-trend to win back the Melbourne seat of Goldstein from independent Zoe Daniel, called nuclear power “my core sense of belief”. Others, such as NSW Liberal Senator Maria Kovacic want it gone, fast. But not all, and definitely not the rural-based renewables-hating Nats who, unlike the Libs, held their ground last weekend and will have increased numerical power in the Coalition room.
Burned and spurned
This is despite a seismic wave of voter rejection sweeping Coalition ranks. And regardless of the fact that as Labor lifts the veil on its winning campaign tactics, it’s becoming clear that targeting anxiety and uncertainty about nuclear power was crucial to its landslide.
Nuclear underpinned Labor’s devastating “He cuts, you pay” message, overlaid on a scary-looking image of Peter Dutton, successfully linking a claimed $600 billion future public bill for reactors to maintaining Medicare funding. It sparked a $2 million attack ad splurge by the union movement. It breathed life into the mysteriously well-funded, sprung-from-nowhere Liberals Against Nuclear campaign, which ran relentlessly across TV, socials and billboards.
Dutton had even invited making the 2025 election a referendum on nuclear, channelling his Voice victory political high water mark 18 months ago. It was like a referendum. He was smashed.
Lying game
No matter that the Coalition kept insisting the $600 million figure was a “Labor lie”. Dutton et al had spent years claiming that Labor had a “100% renewables-only” energy policy (which it didn’t because of its ongoing embrace of gas) and Labor’s energy transition model would cost $1.2 trillion, a wild exaggeration for which it had no evidence. The Coalition kept pointing to its “our plan is cheaper by 44%” custom-commissioned economic modelling. But who believes politicians bearing models anymore?
Labor strategists must be salivating all over again. A Coalition staying wedded to its taxpayer-funded nuclear power dream for the next three years, hanging like a mushroom cloud over its vulnerable climate and energy positioning, would be the gift that keeps on giving. Just do the maths.
Take current renewables-led energy transition settings, which the second-term Labor government will aim to accelerate. Indeed, even in the past 48 hours, huge wind, solar and battery projects have been granted national electricity grid access in NSW, underlining how renewables investment can surge when political uncertainty has been removed.
Road to perdition
By the time of the next scheduled election in 2028, the contribution of battery-augmented renewable solar, wind and hydro generation in electricity grids is projected to be past 60%.
It would be extraordinary, however, if the Coalition could stage a comeback in just three years. When counting wraps up, the Coalition will at best hold only half as many seats in the lower house as Labor, low- to mid-40s versus low-90s, which in any normal circumstances suggests a long road back to governing.
By 2031, three years later, renewable electricity generation may well be past 80%, given Labor’s 2030 target is 82%, in a far more electrified energy system as gas is phased down if not out, and a far more decarbonised one as fossil fuels retreat. Most of the ageing and unreliable coal-fired power stations will be retired by then, some being transformed into renewable energy hubs. Any notion of turning them into nuclear reactor sites, as the Coalition proposed for seven locations around Australia, would be hopelessly distant — 15 years or further from the get-go, according to the CSIRO.
Sitting target
In terms of net zero by 2050, Australia’s bipartisan pledge to the UN, the nuclear power policy was never much more than a fig leaf struggling to cover not much at all. Locked out of political power, riven by internal recriminations and ideological differences, and struggling against voter-inflicted PTSD, the Coalition is unlikely to become a climate (or any) policy development powerhouse any time soon.
Everyone knows about the small-target strategy for oppositions to coast to victory against an unpopular government. The Coalition’s nuclear policy, launched by Dutton with much fanfare in mid-2023, was the total opposite, a big target strategy. It painted that big target on its own chests and backs, in high-vis glow-in-the-dark colours, with radioactive hazard warnings all over it.
Don’t think it wasn’t warned. In February last year, leading pollster from the RedBridge Group Tony Barry, a former top Liberal Party strategist in Victoria, highlighted very publicly that the Coalition was writing “the longest suicide note in Ausralian political history”. Barry had hard numbers to back up his rhetorical flourish, finding that just 35% of Australians supported nuclear power, with only coal less popular.
So it came to pass at the weekend. Death by ballot box. A tactical nuclear device that blew up in the faces of its makers, foremost among them Dutton, who lost the Brisbane seat of Dickson he’d held for 24 years, a first for an opposition leader in Australia.
Bombed out
Nuclear will have to be high on the agenda for any serious internal review into the most catastrophic election loss in the Liberal Party’s nearly 80-year history, following the second worst in May 2022 which brought Dutton to the leadership. Within a few months, Dutton had greenlighted putting the Coalition on the nuclear power path, opened the door to pro-nuclear, anti-renewables and fossil fuel proponents, and put his personal stamp all over it.
The election post-mortem team, whoever gets handed that poisoned chalice, will have a golden opportunity to recommend burying the nuclear policy debacle along with Dutton. As moderate Sussan Ley and hard-right Angus Taylor shape up as key contenders for leadership of their stricken party, the choice of sticking with or abandoning nuclear will be a key test of where to now for conservative politics.
Finally. The political uncertainty around renewables has moved into the rear view mirror. Hopefully it won’t regather speed and overtake us again.
Lets wait to see if Canavan leass the Nats as that idiot is all nuclear
It amazed me that no one pointed to the actual amount of waste produced from 7 nuclear power stations. Dutton said is was only a cupful which was quickly countered with several drum fulls. No one mentioned the waste had to be stored somewhere and remains radioactive for several hundred years. Is that a legacy we should pass on to the next generation(s)?
Here’s hoping the Libs use the same review methods in 2025 as 2022.
That’ll fix it
Or is the “same rear view methods”. Either way, it’s the same miserable outcome.
Great article.
just astounding that Abbott is lurking in back ground still and Taylor who is as much to blame as Dutton thinks Price will be the winning parachute in OR the later scapegoat. They are dinosaurs waiting for the asteroid to finish them off once and for all as unable to pivot out of RW conservatism that serves a very wealthy minority.
Maybe enough of the electorate remembered the risible, incompetent and often corrupt rabble of a mere three years ago.Some of those insulting fools are still to be seen,e.g.Taylor,Ley, Littleproud etc., now to be joined by a self appointed ‘saviour’, the toxic buzzard from the N.T.Fancy being entirely obliterated from within.Dutton has set the scene for self destruction, (a big shout out to the Newscorp trash)Good riddance’What a gaggle of irrelevant fuckwits.
🤗🙌
Hear Hear 👍 Well said Harry 👏👏👏
It’s not at all surprising that nuclear killed them off. So, so expensive, slow and risky. SMNR technology, so favoured by O’Brien and others, does not yet exist commercially. Storing nuclear wastes for hundreds of thousands of years is an unconscionable burden on humanity. Furthermore, even nuclear power plants have a finite life (just like politicians it seems). It was rarely, if ever, acknowledged that a decision to go nuclear would lumber our great grandchildren with the immense risks and enormous costs of dismantling these behemoths.
One might have had a minuscule skerrick more confidence if sucked-in proponents had pronounced it correctly as “nuclear”, rather than “nucular”. Pathetic.
Yes John. I agree thoroughly. How would we in the present day feel if ancient civilisations such as the Egyptians and elsewhere left us radioactive sites scattered across the globe to manage.
The biggest problem with Dutton’s ‘Nuclear Dummy’ was putting it on the election agenda so late, with appauling delivery timings, rubbish costings, the proposition that Australia’s electrical energy consumption would somehow start to reduce, with totally misunderstood nuclear waste disposal parameters ( remember the coke can of waste remark from Dutton ?), and with only a 7% target for replacing fossil fuel generated electric capabilities. Absolutely Rubbish !!!
If nuclear power ever gets back on the Australian Political Agenda again in the next decade, it should be with proven and scaleable medium size nuclear power generators, with costings based on proven delivery performance ( ideally from a reputable nation who has a proven and scaleable product that they will sell to us ), some mention at least of the way that the nuclear power station can be protected from any enemy attack so that one bomb on target doesnt wipe us all out ( like locating it deep underground ?), and with a well considered and viable deeply located niclear waste disposal regime that ( perhaps ) we can capitalise on for revenue from other friendy nations.
Don’t write nuclear energy off forever. It is quite like to have a place in our long-term future.
After all, we have one of the worlds largest deposits of nuclear fuel. Unkalen
I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Sussan Ley become leader, with Taylor feigning disappointment. He’ll then spend the next 2 1/2 years undermining her only to become leader just before the 2028 election. So he can position himself for 2031.
Today’s comments and the current Liberal “road to perdition” are like ambrosia for the Labor Party. They’ve made it so easy for the Labor Party! However now (a bit off topic) there needs to be a bit more clarity around the dumping of Ed Husic (Moslem) and Attorney General Mark Dreyfus (Jewish). I’m with Paul Keating on this terrible decision.
Absolutely agree Anita. Factionalism at its worst.
And orchestrated it seems, in the case of Dreyfus, by the hollow man himself Richard Marles, the exemplar for the Peter Principle.
Agreed. Richard Marles has not shone in any aspect of his ministerial duties so I can only presume that he was elected Deputy Leader by those very same factional allies.
I’m also very cross at Albo for not intervening to save Husic and Dreyfus. Those factional rules are so last century. It’s time they went.
Yes, bad decision to dump those two! Not an auspicious start from Labor!
Yeah, looks like hubris is already setting in.Didn’t take long, did it ?The factional thing with the Labor Party is just another example of why those party rules should be ditched.Dropping competent ministers to satisfy ‘party rules’ is what will bring them undone.This is 2025, not 1965.
I don’t believe for a minute all this bullshit about another two terms etc.You can rely on Labor to fall into infighting over who’s got what, and who’s better.Their biggest handicap is the idiot Marles, who is only there because of factional rules, and I reckon he fancies himself as PM.The opposition might be mortally wounded, but that doesn’t mean that a minority government is out of the question next time.
As Bill Hayden once said “a drover’s dog could have won this election”
The duopoly is on it’s last hind legs.
Exactly!
For anyone to think that Albo is capable of independent thought and action, theyr’e dreaming.
Gday Murray. It’s a post-apocylaptic blasted landscape for the Libs, with mutant hyenas fighting and snarling over the scraps and bones of a toxic, corrupted corpse. Best regards from a drunken former subeditor in the Brisbane Fairfax office.
I look at those on the Coalition side who bray that only a hard turn even further to the Right will save them, and I think of Talleyrand on the Bourbons; “They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.”
I once hosted a community radio program “Radioactive Show” in the late 70’s into the eighties. We had anti nuclear news, information, interviews and music from around the world and recorded all the programs. Unfortunately, all was destroyed on Black Saturday 2009 by an “unprecedented” bushfire – an indicator of the increasing effects of climate change. Wish these programs were still available for people to hear the informed eloquence and passion of activists at that time. By the way, being a survivor of climate change aggravated bushfires does not convince me to adopt nuclear power because it needs to be 100% safe from accidents, earth movements, bombing, etc and they still have no real solution to disposing of nuclear waste safely for hundreds of thousands of years.
A shout out to all comments so far.
I don’t usually respond because others do it better.
But a few things might be added here?
Let’s hope the Noalition/Libs choose Aberdeen Angus as opposed to the
Wicked Witch of the Sump.
He is arrogant, boorish and hubristic.
Likely to lead them right into the next phase: NEMESIS.
She is much more acute politically, handily female which might actually help
get more women to support this rabble and therefore more dangerous to us progressives.
Hence Fatty O’Barrel, Nick Grinder and that other oaf’s support.
Meanwhile Jacinta Two-face can’t keep her political knickers up.
And Dan ‘The Donkey’ Teehan might be someone’s deputy.
Pray it’s Aberdeen Angus?
If so they are then they are truly ******.
As for Littleproud- so aptly named because he has so little to be proud of- he too is probably ******
Meanwhile Australia, under El Jeffe Albo shuffles to a gas warming but much better renewables based future.
Thank goodness.
Let not the best be the enemy of the good.
Let’s hope Tanya survives the assassin’s blade and gets a real go.
She really wants to make a difference.
Kropotkin
Poor Tanya
She was set up to fail, and mercilessly overruled, by Albo after the 2022 election. Yet she is one person who could genuinely make a genuine difference.
That’s why she is dangerous to Albo.
How many of Tony Abbot’s enemies heads have fallen, could there be more yet. Labor’s stategists should use him as an advisor on the destuction of the Liberals. Hell has no fury like a Prime Minister scorned. Keep up the good work Tony.